Vivaldi's Virgins (16 page)

“Then you are no doubt equally ignorant of the fact that each time a vote was about to be taken about whether to confirm you, you committed some gross infringement of the rules that made it impossible for us to do so?”

“No, Signora. That is, yes, Signora. I was ignorant of this as
well.” I kept my eyes focused on the painting by Antonio Balestra hanging on the wall behind her, all the while praying to the Virgin to keep me from showing how distressed I was by the
priora
’s news.

“Figlia mia,
” she said, sighing and rubbing her eyes. “You have a considerable gift. Several
iniziate
who are less talented than you have already been confirmed in the
coro
. It pains me. I feel it as a pain here”—she put her hand over her heart—“every time a vote is taken and I have to deny your promotion.”

I could see that she meant what she said. I noticed a resemblance in the painting between Saint Elizabeth and the Prioress, and realized that the painter must have been commissioned to paint it thus.

“It pains me—it embarrasses me, Anna Maria. We have always had great hopes for you.”

I bowed my head, furiously angry with her and all the adults who had me in their power. Talent is what should have mattered, not whether one was able to follow all their stupid, petty rules. When I looked up, she’d put her spectacles back on and was searching through her papers again.

“It is my sad duty to inform you, Signorina, that you will not be among the
figlie
whose confirmation in the
coro
will be celebrated this Sunday with cakes and wine. Giulietta dal Violincello is to be confirmed that day.” She looked at me, I suppose to gauge my reaction. But I felt glad enough for Giulietta. “And so is Bernardina dal Violin.”

Well, then. Bernardina. Had she known of the upcoming confirmation when she made the bid for my friendship—when she made it possible for me to miss class yet another time? Perhaps it was Bernardina herself who had pointed out to Sister Giovanna that I wasn’t there. Did she exult when the black mark was made beside my name?

I bit down hard on my lower lip, staring at the feet of the Angel Gabriel. When the Prioress said nothing more but continued to look through her papers, I got up to leave.

“One moment, Signorina.” She took several sheets of music out from the pile on her desk, rolling them up and then tying them together with a blue ribbon. “This has been sent to you by Don Vivaldi. It is a concerto in D minor, which he has written for the three of you—you, Bernardina, and Giulietta. You were all three to have played it at the confirmation party. I have yet to decide what to do about this…” She paused. “Awkwardness.”

She handed the scroll to me. “Don Vivaldi particularly wants you to try out the first violin solo. He says he is quite sure that you are the only one—save himself—who has the skill.”

Dear Maestro!

“And one last thing, before you leave.”

I looked at her, wondering what further piece of bad news she had saved up for the end of our interview.

“I’ve already told Bernardina—you are to begin giving her lessons, twice a week. Close your mouth, Anna Maria. The expression is most unbecoming.”

I may have been mistaken, but I thought I saw her smile—and, at first, I thought she might be mocking me. Bernardina would rather die than accept me as her teacher—and she a full-fledged member of the
coro
now! And yet she would have to if she hoped to keep her place.

“What are you waiting for, child? Go!”

I curtseyed and left, the scroll tight in my hand and the other news coursing through my veins.

T
he solo was, just as the maestro had implied, fiendishly difficult to play, much of the fingering so close to the
bridge so as to make it nearly impossible. I was hard at it, trying my best to make the thing work, when I felt a sudden draft and felt sure that I was no longer alone in the practice room. Turning around, I saw Giulietta in the doorway.

“Did you write that?”

“Of course not! What are you doing here,
cara?
Is the portrait finished already?”

“No one else
knows
I’m here, Annina. I’m here to get my things.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard you playing—it could have been no one but you…or maybe the maestro.”

“What do you mean, you’re here to get your things?”

“The only part of the whole plan that bothered me was not being able to say goodbye. And now I can.”

“Giulietta!” The words caught in my throat. “Are you running away?”

Giulietta took my hands in hers but couldn’t meet my eyes. “Rosalba says that it sometimes happens two or even three times in a lifetime. But for others, there’s only ever once. And if you allow that one time to pass you by—”

“You can’t leave now!”

“If you don’t take seriously what he says when he says it—”

“Listen to me!”

“If you act overly modest and girlish and shy—if you try to do what’s proper instead of what your heart tells you to do—”

“Giulietta, you’re about to be confirmed in the
coro!
”

“I don’t care,
cara
. I’m in love.”

“At least let it happen first! The maestro has written a concerto for you, me, and Bernardina.” I showed her the music. “
This
concerto.”

“Kiss me, Annina. Kiss me and say
addio!
”

“And now there’ll be no one to play it—no one but that Cyclops!”

“I will send word somehow, when we’ve found a place where we can settle. But he says we may be on the road—living like Gypsies—for a long while.”

“You’ll be gone, and Claudia is nearly seventeen, and I can’t seem to stay out of trouble long enough to be confirmed…”

“I’ll be able to play my cello, and he’ll look for commissions wherever we go. Venetian painters are much in demand all over Europe now.”

“Please don’t leave me here alone, Giulietta!”

She embraced me, and I held on to her as I would have held on to my mother when she left me here, had I been old enough and strong enough instead of a helpless newborn baby.

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to let go.

She finally peeled my hands away and dried my tears with the corner of her apron. “If I have a daughter,” she promised gaily, “I will name her Anna Maria.”

M
any years ago, I received a present from Rosalba—a miniature copy of the portrait of Diana she painted for King Frederick. She sits here on my table, dreaming of Actaeon.

The gossips of Venezia speak of Christina, the daughter of a gondolier, who serves as the model for so many of the saints and Madonnas in Tiepolo’s frescoes. Only those of us who remember Giulietta know that the gondolier’s daughter was given this job because she looks like Tiepolo’s first love, the girl he loved when he himself was nothing more than a boy and powerless to save
her. Pretty Giulietta, who died giving birth to Tiepolo’s baby, the two of them friendless and penniless, somewhere in a field in Slovenia.

No one was ever able to tell me if the child was a girl.

There is another Anna Maria here who is my pupil now, a violinist with chestnut curls. She was born too soon to have been Giulietta’s, but only by a couple of years. I have told her all about Giulietta, every wonderful story, so that the two of us have laughed long and hard together, and I know that Giulietta will not be forgotten as long as this other Anna Maria is alive. When she calls me
zietta
—as, of course, she does—I love her just as much as I would if she were truly the daughter of my dear, departed friend and had been named for me. She is very gifted. I am quite sure she will be a
maestra
one day.

W
E WERE AT OUR EMBROIDERY LESSON
when Maestra Evelina slipped through the door and waited, as was fitting, until Maestra Rosa looked up from the sacred text she was reading out loud. There were some whispered words between them while all of us pretended to continue working, all the while listening just as hard as we could.

It’s strange to realize that the piece of work in my embroidery frame that day was a spray of pomegranate blossoms that became the cushion for a chair—the same chair I sit in now. The flowers are faded and the fabric is worn—but it is my favorite chair and always will be. I remember, while I worked on it, how I pictured the finished cushion on a chair in the house where I imagined living one day with Franz Horneck. In my picture, there was a fire in the grate and there were two or three tousle-haired children on the rug at my feet while I read to them from Ovid or Ghiliermo Shakespeare but never the solemn words of God.

When the bells rang to send us to our rest time, Maestra Rosa asked me to stay behind. I sat there waiting until all the other girls had filed out, one or two with a sympathetic backward glance at me.

Maestra Rosa waited a long time before speaking, so that I was surprised when all she had to tell me was that I had a visitor. I thought I saw her look at me searchingly—but then I thought I
may have been imagining any special look from her. She smiled at me before gathering her things and quitting the room.

I knew that it was visiting day, but, usually, there was no one who visited me.

Loneliness has nothing to do with being alone. I was surrounded day and night by others who shared so much with me. And yet, without Giulietta, Claudia, or Marietta, I felt unanchored from what little sense I had of who I was or how it was possible to find any happiness at all. In their absence, I traded the world of daily life for a world inhabited by people—alive or dead, real or imagined—who loved me. I walked through one life while I dwelt in another.

A sense of excitement dawned in me as I made my way down to the
parlatorio,
stair by marble stair. Who could my visitor be, but a messenger from Marietta? How quickly she’d worked! I hadn’t expected to receive word from her so soon.

Maestra Evelina greeted me with a barely suppressed expression of glee. “There’s your visitor,
cara,
” she said, turning backward toward the grille.

I saw a black-cloaked noblewoman sitting there, masked and so well covered that it would have been impossible to recognize her even if she had been someone I knew well. Had Marietta herself come in this disguise—a costume she would soon enough be wearing in her new life—to tell me what she’d found out about the locket? And then I wondered in a wild, improbable moment if this masked
zentildonna
could be my lodestar and the recipient of my letters. Had she finally come to me?

Would she love me? I touched my cheeks and hair. Would she be disappointed in me? I wished fervently that I were taller and plumper, that I had arresting green eyes like Marietta and lustrous auburn curls like Giulietta or a fine bosom like Claudia.

But I had none of these.

Maestra Evelina winked at me. “You won’t mind, will you,
cara,
if I slip away for a moment or two?”

I watched her go and then approached the grille slowly, filled with fear.

The lady gestured for me to sit down. I sat. And then she inclined her head very close to the grille. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Let me touch you, child. Give me your hand.”

It wasn’t Marietta—of that much I was certain. I poked two of my fingers through the grille. The masked woman grasped them. Her grip was terribly strong. She bent her face over my hand, and I felt my hand grow wet with her tears.

And then I heard the voice that I had heard so often in my daydreams. I felt the scratch of whiskers as he kissed my fingers and I felt a charge course through me, as if I’d been struck by lightning.

“Franz!”

“My angel.”

“You haven’t forgotten me.”

“How could I?”

He lifted his mask so that I could see his eyes. Franz Horneck’s eyes! I touched his face through the grille. “Why do you weep?”

“Because life is so unfair.”

“I know—I know!” I loved him looking at me. Not because I thought he admired me, but because I felt he saw me. “Do you remember Giulietta, from the ball?”

“It’s the talk of all Venezia, how she has run away with the young Giambattista Tiepolo.”

I wondered if Franz had come to ask me to run away with him. I’ve wondered much over the years what I would have said.

“Anna Maria, I have to leave Venezia. I am called home.”

“Is there bad news from your family?”

Franz sat back so that his face moved away from mine. “They think it’s good news,” he said bitterly.

I said nothing. What could I say? What right did I have to ask anything of him?

He moved close to me again and, although there was no one else in the room, he spoke to me in a whisper. “Please believe me. If I could choose a bride, I would choose you. I would live with you and love you for the rest of my life.”

Tears came into my eyes, but still I said nothing.

“But I am not free to choose. These travels of mine—as well as a bad investment my father made—have left my family close to ruin. They have found a girl with a fortune, whose family would like to link itself to ours. And so I am to be married, against my every inclination, when my whole heart belongs to another. Oh, sweet Signorina, my heart belongs to you.”

I placed my hand against the grille, and he placed his hand against mine, so that there was only the thinnest filigree of metal between us, and I could feel the heat of him and the floral pattern—a design of pomegranate blossoms—press itself into the flesh of my palm. “I will keep it safe, then, Franz Horneck.”

I heard Maestra Evelina clear her throat, signaling that she had come back, and that the time for the visit was over.

Franz lowered his mask. “Forever,” he whispered.

It surprises me now, looking back, how hard I thought in that moment about myself and Franz and the years that would stretch on without him. I think, as in a vision, I saw my entire life. People who have almost died say that one experiences just such a vision—one’s entire life in a flash of light—in the moment one sees the face of the Angel of Death approaching.

The words came unbidden, against my better judgment. After all, Franz Horneck was about to be married, and I was but
fourteen and a virgin. And yet the words would come—the words would be spoken. “Forever,” I whispered.
“Per sempre.”

ANNO DOMINI
1710

Madre mia carissima,

Dearest Mother, I write to you in desperation! I think sometimes that God must hate me to leave me here cut off from those I love. And yet haven’t I served God well, dedicating my very youth to singing His praises? What have I done to deserve to be abandoned here—again and again abandoned here? How I wish that you could send word to me somehow and tell me that I do not write to you in vain!

There
are
ways. The girls who work in the laundry seem to have the greatest access to contact from the outside. I have an ally there—a girl of the
comun
who has shown herself quite happy to carry out commissions for those of us who need her services. Only recently she slipped a letter into my hand while she passed me in the hallway with a pile of clean linens. This letter was from Marietta, who knew full well that it would have been burned without ever reaching me if she’d sent it in the normal way.

Poor Marietta has had a miscarriage. She wrote to say that she was carefully tended by the good nuns of San Francesco della Vigna, who massaged her and gave her herbs at night to help her sleep. And yet her baby broke free of its moorings well before it ever had a chance to grow. It was just a mess of clotted blood that came out of her more awfully and painfully than the worst period she’d ever had.

She is still engaged to be married to Tomasso Foscarini, who loves her
à la folie.
At least now, writes Marietta, his family will not tax her with the shame that would have been brought upon them by a pregnant bride in the wedding processional.

Because the Foscarini are so rich, Marietta’s father-in-law is willing to forego her dowry—which means, of course, that no contract will have to be signed, apart from the marriage contract, and Marietta will be free to pursue her singing career outside the Pietà.

It would not have happened this way if I hadn’t lied for her.

No one was injured by my falsehood, and both Marietta and her bridegroom have been made very happy as a result of it. Why is my lie, then, a mortal sin?

I hope I live a very long time, because I have a terror of facing Judgment Day. And yet I have played only a small part in the great web of events that have conspired in Marietta’s favor.

I told you of Handel’s plans for an opera. The libretto is by Cardinal Grimani, whose family owns three of our greatest theaters: the Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the San Samuele, and—the very best of them—the newly reopened San Giovanni Grisostomo, which the composer dearly wanted for his opera debut in
la Serenissima.
I am well informed for a cloistered girl, am I not? Maestro Vivaldi always spoke freely with us about such things while he taught here.

The libretto for Handel’s opera, naturally, had to be passed first by the censor. But, in this case, the censor was the Grand Inquisitor himself, Raimondo Pasquali—a great friend, as it happens, of the Foscarini. Influence is everything, and everyone, it would seem, has his price, whether it’s paid in influence or gold.

Everything was in place. But Handel could find no one who pleased him for the role of Poppea—Poppea, who must be beautiful enough to be loved and desired by every male character in the opera, and yet must sing with the sweetness of an angel and the range and power of a whole host of angels over many hours.

Someone, it seems, whispered three words in the ear of our dear young Saxon composer,
il caro Sassone,
as everyone calls Handel now: Marietta della Pietà.

Oh, tell me, Mother, that it was you who told Handel about how perfect Marietta would be for his opera! It would be proof that you have been reading my letters, even though you have never answered them, not a single one.

I am hoping against hope that the
figlie di coro
will be allowed to go see Marietta perform. She writes that so many flowers have already been sent to her that the
parlatorio
of the convent of San Francesco della Vigna looks like a garden.

I feel sorry for those nuns who need to minister to Marietta’s needs every day—Marietta the newly minted diva. Marietta risen up from the gutter to have her name written into the Golden Book, joined in marriage with Tomasso Foscarini. Marietta who promises to visit the Pietà in her wedding procession along the Grand Canal, who says she will stop here and give us enough chocolates to make us all sick for a week.

Thank you for helping my friend, if it was you who helped her, dear Mother. I wish there were some such magic you could work for me. But there will be no procession of gondolas for the wedding of Anna Maria dal Violin.

I received another letter this week, handed over to me by the Prioress herself. Claudia wrote to tell me of her bridegroom. He is not old and ugly as she had feared, but someone of a neighboring noble family who was her playmate during childhood—a great favorite of hers—before she was sent here to hone her musical skills (and stay out of trouble until she came of age). His family is noble and poor, while Claudia’s has had its fortune and lands for only a couple of centuries. And so the match benefits both houses. She will actually have the title of princess now. Can you imagine that?
La principessa
Claudia.

She, too, has promised to bring us chocolates.

I have not one single friend left here in this place. Bernardina hates me more than ever, now that she has to take lessons from
me. And Maestra Meneghina—la Befana—is the only one deemed skilled enough to be my teacher. She never has anything good to say about my playing. When she is silent at the end of one of our lessons, I feel that I have triumphed—because at least she has not been able to find any reason to fault me.

I can’t remember the last time I laughed. I’m sure it was before Giulietta ran away, because she and I were always the ones who laughed most tremendously together—she and I, and Claudia, too, sometimes. When I lie in bed and pore over what we said and did, I can make myself smile and even, sometimes, laugh a tiny bit. But that kind of laugh—a remembered laughter—only makes me cry, in the end, because my friends are gone now, and I know how alone I really am.

I would probably be crying myself to sleep every night were it not for the music that Maestro Vivaldi continues to send me.

It seems that he is composing more and more. I’m sure it’s what he cares about most, even though, of course, he’s very vain about his skill as a performer. Half the time, I think, he composes simply as a means to show this virtuosity to the world. But then, at other times, he writes something so tender, and so filled with invention and sweetness and passion. What can this be but Divine Grace? I wonder mightily why some people in the world—even though they may not really seem to be more righteous or deserving than any others—are thus singled out. Sometimes I think that God makes artists quite by accident.

The Prioress handed me another of the maestro’s compositions along with Claudia’s letter—a sonata in B-flat. There at the top—just as he had that very first time—he’d scrawled the words,
“per Signorina Anna Maria.”
Like the last solo he wrote for me, it’s very hard to play. I suspect, in fact, that he gives them to me only to see if it’s possible for anyone other than himself to play the music as he’s written it. Please don’t think me too vain—but
everyone says this about the music the maestro dedicates to me.